#. calendiles is present but muted

[addiehour]

title: you are

words: 1,229

notes:  I rarely hype my stuff on the post itself, but this would have changed the entire show. Please read it.

“Jenny,” Giles says, pacing a little before her, “there’s been-- a development.”

This is not really news. It might have been news if he hadn’t pulled her out of her second class of the day and stood in front of her while polishing his glasses, then wearing his glasses, then polishing his glasses, then wearing his glasses, then dropping his glasses in front of her for the past five minutes, but as things stand right now... Jenny can guess that something has happened.

“What’s up?” she asks lightly, and Giles looks at her like she’s not using the right tone. Which might be true, but there’s also the fact that he once called her in a panic because he couldn’t find the right tea in his desk drawer and was convinced she had stolen the entire box and hidden it in her house to purposefully cause him stress, so she’s kind of hovering on the optimistic side of things. As usual.

“It’s-- well.” He starts polishing his glasses again, and she sighs. He jams them back onto his face hurriedly-- they’re a little askew-- and shoves his hands into his pockets. “As you may or may not recall, Buffy died last year.”

Jenny nods. She was kind of there for the post-death party, once all the zombies and whatnot had been taken care of. Willow tried to sneak some wine, which Jenny hadn’t expected of her, but of course Willow always gets what she wants... Sweet kid.

Right: Buffy.

“She’s alright now, isn’t she?” Jenny says, and now her tone is a little bit softer, because nothing good can come of discussing death or Buffy with Giles’ voice this low.

“Yes,” he says, very flatly-- so she must really be-- “but there’s been a sort of-- hiccup. With the Slayers.”

“Oh, boy,” Jenny says, crossing her legs. Giles knows she doesn’t like how the Watcher Council deals with the Slayers; all this weapon-talk when some of the girls are sixteen, for God’s sake, and people besides, and all the rules and regulations surrounding how to treat live women so that they’ll obey some skeevy old creeps is really not her deal. Even if one of the skeevy old creeps is her boyfriend.

“Another one has been called,” Giles says.

Jenny looks at him.

“‘One girl in all the world’...?” she tries, and Giles shakes his head, taking his glasses off again.

“The-- the rules are completely explicit,” he says, not looking at her. “When one dies, another is called. But-- but Buffy lived, and I forgot completely... I thought there could only be one, but, but apparently not, and now--”

Jenny waits as Giles takes a deep, apparently steadying breath. She pretends to be very focused on smoothing her little pleated skirt over her knees. So cute; and she was going to use her feminine wiles to ask him out later, but it looks like that’s not happening. Or maybe it still is, but probably only after all this-- whatever is going on-- has been settled.

And she was really looking forward to that date, too, because this morning one of the computers glitched and she tried to fix it by giving it her trademark Calendar Slap™, and instead the thing dented and started shooting sparks, and now it looks like that computer’s out of order. And she can’t even draw all of Giles’ attention to her plight, because God knows what else is going on, and of course the Hellmouth is drawing all the attention from Jenny (who deserves it, obviously) to itself. And its stupid Hellmouth problems.

“What’s going to happen with the other Slayer?” Jenny prompts when Giles doesn’t speak, and he startles a little.

“Well-- she’ll, ah, she’ll have to be trained,” he says. “It-- it isn’t often one of the known Potentials isn’t called; we’ve all been-- slightly shaken by-- certain developments--”

“Giles, I don’t understand a word out of your mouth on a good day, but you might as well be speaking Japanese right now.”

Giles looks so guilty. Now Jenny’s sure something’s gone wrong. He pulls up a chair and sits down in front of her, casting a glance to the library doors. He locked them, actually, before this talk, and thinking about that again makes Jenny very worried.

“Rather than a known Potential being called,” Giles says, and Jenny nods, “someone... rather unknown to the Council has become a Slayer. This is very strange, for everyone.”

“I guess so,” Jenny says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. As usual, she can’t sympathize too hard with Watcher perspectives, but she does wonder about the Slayer. Poor girl. Jenny’s had her fair share of unnecessary destiny handed to her; she can’t imagine adding ‘save the world’ to that. A little pang of guilt hits her when she realizes she still hasn’t told Giles about the family-espionage-Angel-accidental-mild-lying situation, and she’s quick to move on. “So what’s going to happen to the Slayer?”

“Well, I-- I’ve asked to be her Watcher,” Giles says, and Jenny frowns.

“Another Slayer? Rupert, you’re going grey early as it is.”

“Don’t remind me,” he mutters, but snaps out of it quickly. “Jenny, I need you to listen to me. This is very complicated, and I-- I was certain it had been a mistake at first, but it is almost certainly not, and you know I--”

He cuts himself off quickly and puts his head in his hands.

“I never meant to involve you in all of this,” he says, and his voice is low and ragged.

Jenny looks at him for a moment, confused, and then it snaps into place. Her chest is frozen. She stands, and her chair topples over behind her, and somebody is yelling “No, no, no, no--”

Giles looks up at her, and she won’t let that guilt get to her, she won’t, and she stumbles back harder, further away from him. Their eyes are locked.

“I won’t,” she repeats, shaking her head. “I won’t.”

“Jenny, I wish things were different,” he says, and now his voice is much harder, and she knows he’s doing it just to remind himself but it still hurts, and it’s still too sharp, and all of this is all wrong, how did this happen to her, why is it her?

“You can’t make me,” she says, putting a fist up to her eyes as if she can pretend that she’s not crying. She knows she’s acting like a child, but isn’t that who it’s supposed to be? Girls? Girls, not women, not her, never her--

Giles stands, finally, and he pulls her close with enough force that hitting his chest kind of hurts. She sniffles and takes a moment to close her eyes and breathe against his chest. This is helpful.

“I wish it weren’t true,” he says, and he rubs her back gently. Somewhere, dimly, she wonders if this is going to change their relationship. If they can’t go on that date now, because that would break a rule in a musty old book somewhere. “But it is. It’s too late now.”

He pulls her away from him, and she looks into his eyes again. From this angle, she can see he’s been crying, too. His grip on her arms isn’t quite as firm as he’d probably like it to be.

“Jenny, you are the Slayer.”

#benfic #jenny calendar #. calendiles is present but muted #buffy